Preoperational Thought III: Identities and Categorization

Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development spans from 2 to 7 years.

It is marked by the growth of symbolic thinking, but children show limited logical reasoning.

During this stage, children also develop identity recognition and categorization.

Identity recognition is the understanding that individuals and many objects remain the same, even when their shape, size, or appearance changes.

For example, around age 4, a child understands that an individual wearing a wig is still the same person.

Categorization, or classification, involves recognizing similarities and differences.

By age 4, many children can classify objects using two criteria: color and shape.

They also apply this skill to social understanding, such as grouping people as nice or mean.

One form of categorization is differentiating between living and nonliving things.

While doing this, children between ages 3 and 5 may show animism—the tendency to view nonliving objects as alive.

Recent studies show that children often see objects as living when they clearly show lifelike traits, such as movement or features like eyes.